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SiteI Am Cynra’s Impotent Rage
Like many people I have encountered in World of Warcraft, I consider myself to be a pretty decent human being. I’ve yet to cheat anyone while performing a crafting service. I’ve never contemplated taking advantage of people’s gullibility to steal their in-game funds or wipe out the guild bank. I’ve gone out of my way in the past to assist others who needed help with quests or figuring out what to do or even by guiding them on simple game mechanics. I enjoy helping others and my perky priestess has made that her sole goal in life.
I’m not perfect, mind you, but the number of people in the history of mankind that can claim that title is pretty blasted small.
I firmly believe that a significant portion of making the world a better place can occur online, where innumerable amounts of people of differing backgrounds can interact with one another on a daily basis. Irregardless of whether or not you ever meet face-to-face with the people you encounter in World of Warcraft, it’s important to realize that they are in fact real people and that they should be treated with the same goodwill and respect that you would give them in real-life — John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory be damned!
This morning, WoWInsider posted an article in its weekly Ask WoW Insider column that introduced a woman who seemed to share the same sort of ideals. In “Ask WoW Insider: Stay at home mom wants to give back to the community“, a mother requested help in trying to determine the best ways to give back to the community. She stated:
As a stay at home mom, I have 16+ hours a day that need filled. Before the “omg, spend more time with your kids” posts, I have two things in my life that I truly have a passion for, my family and WoW. My family ALWAYS comes first. But let’s face it, after a few diapers are changed, books are read, and naps are taken, I have a LOT of time on my hands.
I fill that time playing WoW, reading about WoW, thinking about wow, etc but I want to do more! My dream job (don’t laugh) would be as an in-game GM but my husband’s job doesn’t let me be in an area where that is possible. I spend way too many hours a day trolling various forums; Customer Service, Guild Relations, server forums, etc. I participate in nearly all PTRs that are released. I subscribe to practically every wow related blog on the planet. But it comes down to this: How can I really help? Find a bug, it’s already been reported. See a question, it’s already been answered.
Didn’t go to Paris — no beta key for you! (kidding, kidding, but that’s the rumor, no?) I have a huge desire to help and want to do something that will make a difference with this game and the people who play it. I feel like the places I’m used to hanging around already have all the help they need and don’t need another troll spouting off the typical “wrong forum, customer support is that way ->>” kind of stuff. So, any advice on how I can take my WoW knowledge and experience and give back to the community that would actually be effective and useful?
I’m not looking for some special title or recognition, I truly want to help here and I actually prefer something with a little anonymity. Did I mention 16+ hours a day? There’s only so much farming and raiding a girl can do before she goes crazy.
Stay-at-home-wow-player
In reading Stay-at-home-wow-player’s comments, I was surprisingly invigorated by her words: here was a fellow player who not only obviously enjoyed her hobby, but she also wanted to spend a portion of her day helping those who shared her interests. Her drive resonated with me and — despite not being a mother, despite working as opposed to staying at home, and despite the fact that we’re entirely different people — I felt connected to her. This, this was the sort of endeavor that I’ve often wished I could undertake, given the right amounts of time and effort and resolve.
I was horrified by the responses her email generated.
The attack, however minimal it was, began with the author of the article, who apparently misread her post and assumed that she was contemplating spending the entirety of her sixteen hours a day on World of Warcraft-related endeavors. While this was an understandable mistake1, he chose to believe to take this as a sign that she was addicted to the game and counseled that she “step away from the computer, seriously.” Rather than writing an exhaustive reply on what she could do to better the community, Mark Crump left spent the bulk of his article discussing the merits of having sixteen hours a day and how to better spend them. He then further stated that he had his doubts regarding the autheticity of the email.
His response, however, was one of the more benign. Stay-at-home-wow-user was called overweight2, was ridiculed as a liar, had her parental abilities publicly discussed, and was reprimanded for “diminish[ing] the insane amount of work and effort that mothers and fathers put in raising their children.” Her original feelings of goodwill and aiding the community were disregarded in a deluge of sludge and slime from representatives of the very community that she wanted to support.
Is it physically possible to gnaw on one’s liver? If so, I may be doing just that at this moment.
What infuriates me further is that in this side-discussion regarding whether or not Stay-at-home-wow-player was a negligent mother, the entire point of her damned email was entirely disregarded. Here was a woman whose email heralded goodwill for the downtrodden of our community and her efforts were tossed aside. Rather than adopting the philosophy that she displayed in her email by aiding her in her future endeavors, she was ridiculed and thrown to the proverbial wolves. And the horrible thing is that these assumptions regarding her original email were absolutely incorrect; Stay-at-home-wow-player replied to the discussion as Tayluca, stating that she is “a happy, healthy, well adjusted person who has a meticulous sense of time management and was simply looking for a few ways to help improve the time that [she has] free in a way that positively influenced the community that [she] choose to be a part of.
One of my replies to the discussion that Tayluca’s email prompted more than adequately describes why I currently feel as ornery as cantankerous bitch Rahel Isera’duna feels after an all-night binge:
What I fail to understand is why people feel the need to ridicule someone who obviously wants to give back to the community. We’re surrounded in game by people who think only for themselves: PvP asshats who bend the rules to their favor, self-absorbed raiders who think that anyone who hasn’t downed Illidan is beneath their notice, bank-stealing-jerks, petty rivalries between guilds and players, murlocs, internet jerkwads, and the list goes on and on. These people speak their minds on a regular basis, belittle others, and usually get away with little social recrimination, but when a woman speaks up and says she wants to contribute to the community she’d ridiculed?
I just don’t understand.
Give her support, give her advice, give her the tools she needs, point her in the right direct, and I challenge her to make the community a better place! The lady’s got my support.
- Her original email was a bit ambiguously worded. ↩
- The title image of the article was a picture of actress Robin Thorsen, best known in the World of Warcraft community for her role as negligent gaming mom Clara in “The Guild“. ↩
